


Double Sniff

by QuarterClever



Category: Hannibal (TV), feminism - Fandom
Genre: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Dynamicism, Feminist Themes, Gen, Season/Series 02, Sexism, down with biological essentialism!, feminist omegaverse, fight the alpharchy!, fight the patriarchy!, that's a thing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-22
Updated: 2014-06-22
Packaged: 2018-02-05 17:51:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,362
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1826977
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/QuarterClever/pseuds/QuarterClever
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Beverly is an unmated, childless omega and she likes it that way. No, really. </p><p>What she doesn't like is having to deal with all these microaggressions.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Double Sniff

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sebfish](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sebfish/gifts).



> In which I attempt to do more than I probably accomplished, so I won't explain much in detail. Just know that this was written quickly, in response to [a conversation on tumblr we were having about the need for feminist omegaverse fic](http://quarterclever.tumblr.com/post/89521832495/megsamforever-quarterclever-megsamforever). Whether or not this fic fits the bill is up to you to decide.

Bev was ten first time someone told her she had childbearing hips and she’d best not let them go to waste. She’d blushed at the time. She felt mature, like for the first time she’d entered into some new adult world. Like she was a _real_ woman, a _real_ omega somehow. She grew up playing capture the flag in ripped jeans and the violin in long shapeless dresses—she’d never much thought of what it was to be a woman or an omega, it was just something that she’d get to eventually. That was grownup stuff. Now, at thirty, whenever someone asks her about when she’s finally going to settle down and finally get around to having babies, she grimaces. She feels like punching something. It’s like she can’t be an omega without a baby strapped to her chest, another in her belly, and a few more toddling around her feet.

“I catch murderers for a living. I save people’s lives. That’s _important_.” She never _actually_ says it but she _wants_ to, whenever someone she meets at a bar stops asking her about her job and starts asking her about being unmated. Like being thirty and unmated is something unusual. Like mating and having kids is the _only_ important thing she should do, even when it’s not the only thing she _can_ do and certainly isn’t the only thing she _wants_ to do. Like her status as an unmated omega is not only the most important thing about her, it’s an affront to the very structure of society.

One of her college textbooks spent a few pages talking about the ways in which people categorize each other, and dynamic was right up there as one of the most important. Most people don’t even process the fact that they take a second to smell everyone they come across, subconsciously sorting them as alpha, beta, or omega. That first sniff barely even registers. It’s only when eyes flick down to her left hand and don’t find what they’re looking for that her brain kicks online and lets her know exactly what’s happening (again). She dug through boxes of junk she’s never bothered to throw away a few years ago, looking for that textbook; Price and Zeller never seemed to get quite the same reaction that she did every time the three of them ducked under the ‘police line do not cross’ tape and into a crime scene. The section was more detailed than the few bits she remembered, but in the entire thing there wasn’t a single mention of that sub-classification, the secondary sniff. Probably it wasn’t worth mentioning; everyone _knows_ that being mated is just part of being an omega, after all.

Purnell does the double-sniff as Bev holds open the door for her to enter the conference room; this isn’t the first time they’ve met, and probably won’t be the last, not with Purnell on her post-Copycat Killer version of McCarthyism. “You know,” Purnell remarks casually over her shoulder as Beverly follows her into the room, “I heard a news report the other day about a new study that found that omegas, especially the unmated female ones, hold open doors for alphas when they’re trying to assert dominance, that they want to emasculate them.”

“Or,” Bev says with teeth that are _not_ tightly clenched, “they do it because they got to the door first and it’s polite.” Purnell smiles, smug, like she’s just proved her point.

 

~

 

“Such a pity to see such a brilliant mind in here.” Chilton sounds more like she did when she was looking through her first microscope than he does sorrowful. “So much potential wasted. And to think that this might never have happened if he’d been mated—being mateless is associated with so many physical and psychological maladies, after all.” Chilton takes an obvious sniff of her scent as she walks through the door he holds open to the BSHCI’s visitation room.

“I wasn’t aware,” Bev lies—she’s read the (flawed) studies Chilton has. “How fortunate that the same can’t be said of you.” She brushes past him as he tries to work out what she means by that.

Will sits in his small box, same as always, but she’s slow to approach him today. There was a TV documentary she watched once, about asylums in the 19th century and how they’d lock up omegas and treat them for hysteria. About how they hadn’t actually _said_ what some of those treatments were, just made a few cryptic comments and left it for viewers to read between the lines. About how people in the past were just so backwards, but they knew better today obviously and so that never happened anymore. Except for how she’s looking at an omega sitting in a _cage_ and sure, _maybe_ he’s a murderer and shouldn’t be free, but at the moment that’s a bit hard to remember with Chilton’s eyes on her.

“So, I’m not saying I’m fully ready to believe you,” she says as she manages to make it all the way to the folding chair. “But I think there’s some room for reasonable doubt here.” She’s not sure what the emotion is on Will’s face, but whatever it is makes her stomach lurch at the fact that she’d dismissed him so out of hand before. “Plus, you know, omega solidarity. Fight the power.” She jerks a thumb over shoulder towards Chilton, returning Will’s grin with a larger one of her own.

 

~

 

Zeller’s smirk grows; her stomach drops. She’d been so _careful_ , but an offhand mention of “oh, no, can’t do that, I won’t be here next week” and all of a sudden her uterus is the lab’s biggest joke.

“It’s that time, huh? Gonna go make some babies? Hey, did you hear the one about—” The ‘joke’ he tells is long and complicated, but there’s nothing to really distinguish it from the ones she’s heard before, all the ones about omegas in heat not being able to control themselves, about how they’re so emotional and violently angry pre-heat.

“Haven’t heard it before,” Price offers in the awkward silence that follows, shooting Bev an uncomfortable look as he twists his ring around his finger. He doesn’t say anything else. _Price_ , who can always make an off the wall comment and diffuse the tension, even at the most gruesome murder scenes, can’t or won’t say anything in response to Zeller’s joke. Zeller looks between the two of them, awareness beginning to dawn on his face.

“Uh, guess I’m glad that’s just a joke and not true.” He coughs. “Wouldn’t want you to, erm, you know, murder me for telling an asshole joke like that.” His face is open; Bev believes him, even if his attempt at an apology isn’t perfect.

“Yeah, guess so.” She turns back to the spectrometer; she’s got a lot of work to get done before next week. When she comes back, fingers itching to get back to work and see if any of the ideas she’d come up with when she’d been away from the lab would pan out, Zeller stops her outside the door.

“I owe you an apology. That was wrong of me, to say what I did. You deserve better than that. You’re my colleague and I should have known better. I _do_ know better. And I just want you to know if you ever want anything during your heat, let me know and I’ll help, run to the store or whatever. And…” he rubbed at the back of his neck as he looked at her, inhaling deeply before continuing, “and I’m there too if you ever want an alpha there, if that would make things more comfortable for you, skin contact, you know?”

Bev smiles and tells him thanks. She never takes him up on it, isn’t really that interested, but she’s not offended he offered—she might’ve been if he’d jumped straight to offering sex, she’s not sure, but as it is she’s secretly pleased with his offer to come over and cuddle in a way she’s not sure she’ll ever be able to express. He said _want_ , after all, not _need_.

**Author's Note:**

> So I was reading Susan Faludi's _Backlash _(you should go read it if you haven't) and it kickstarted my desire once more for feminist omegaverse, because so often the trope ends up reproducing notions of gender essentialism under the guise of alpha/omega dynamics and yeah this happened. I honestly don't know how successful it is but the world needs feminist omegaverse so here's my contribution.__
> 
>  
> 
> _  
> _#FightTheAlpharchy__  
> 


End file.
